Illumination
by Rui
Summary: A back story to one of the characters in Lucky Me. Julie's origins. This might explain why she is the way she is...or maybe it is just her excuse. Depends on what they say...


Illumination

Chapter One

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Author's Note: Okay, since the reader's of "Lucky Me" seem to like Julie, I decided to do this brief story of her. IF you want the 'soundtrack' while reading this, then get the songs "Noboy's Home" by Avril Lavigne, "Arms of the Angel" Sara Mclachlan and others that I can't think of. Yes, there is more than one part, and yes I'm working on two different stories that filter off the same vein. Weird? Oh yay.

PLEASE heed the rating people. This deals with serious issues. If you are under 13 or still around that age, I suggest you do NOT read this.

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_They had called her imaginative._

So they set her up with art classes to vent the creations of her mind and her feelings in a more "positive way". It didn't take long for them to notice her pictures were of beings, glowing and disfigured that probably were meant to resemble humans. At this, they frowned. 

They called her repressive.

So they sent her to the psychiatrist. Between her art and her words, the doctor had invented an assumption of knowing her mind. He thought he could clearly see past the vivid and bloody bodies into the mind that produced them. She laughed at him. Every time he opened his mouth it would spout garbage that she knew even _he_ didn't believe. She laughed long and hard at this. At this, they rose an eyebrow.

It wasn't until she decided to take things into her own hands that they called her crazy, incapable of social redemption. That's the first time they fully understood what she had been trying to tell them all along. She needed help, she needed to be understood. At this, they locked her up. 

They called her insane.

Julie knew it was inevitable. After she had been released from the hospital, they locked her away in a different sort of hospital. A psycho ward. She screamed and clawed at the guards who took her away from her embarrassed mother and smirking sister.

She screamed her throat raw after they put her into the padded room. The tips of her fingers were bloody from her clawing at the door until her nails all broke and even then she continued trying to break free. When the fight was gone, only from the weakness in her body and mind, she went to sleep. 

Time was lost to her. She stayed in her room, curled up in a ball of confusion. Why had her mother abandoned her? Julie was just trying to make things better by chasing the demons out of her hands. The flames that came from her hands, she wanted to be normal, so she took the work of disposing of the problem unto herself. This is how they repaid her? By putting her into the very center of the thing she hated? All the depression? All the instability of those around her?

They called this help.

When they brought her out of her room, they put her in the "entertainment area" with the others. They must have hated her, she thought. All the vibration of their emotions came reverberating into her very core. It's when she got around the murderous ones that she started to throw furniture around, causing the other "patients" to react to her lashing out. She had started a riot and had to be sedated and locked up once again. 

They called this bad.

The doctor decided that she should be seen alone, at first. Her first appointment she spent wearing a straight jacket and an expressionless mask. He had gone on and on about how it was very bad to act the way she did in the entertainment room. She asked why he kept calling her by a name that wasn't hers. He smirked, he actually had the audacity to smirk, and said it was because her mother didn't want the public to know that she had an insane daughter. Her mother said her name was "Loone", the doctor said it was probably for the best. 

When Julie lost her temper and felt the utter contempt this man had, she decided to give them reason to call her insane. Though her arms were useless, she still had her legs. She manipulated all her strength to kick the desk, shoving it into the fat man's gut. She felt pleasure when the force caused his chair to roll, hit a shelf and have a rather weighty stack of books fall on him. 

The guards were there within a heartbeat, to prevent her from doing anymore damage. The doctor ordered that she be sedated. Of course Julie had heard stories about places like this and what some of the other people might do to a girl who was helpless. She cried and said she'd behave, but the doctor glared at her. It was the last thing she remembered before being injected with a needle full of sedatives.

They called this a necessity.

Julie was in and out of reality for an unknown amount of time. During one of her clearer times, she remembered the first time she laid eyes on Sutton. More accurately, the first time Sutton laid his eyes on her. He was tall, had narrowed eyes and had, at one time, his eyebrow pierced. He also licked his lips every time he saw her glaring at him.

When no one else was looking, he would stroke her hair. She was too weak to fight back at first. Slowly, they started to decrease her medication so when Sutton came around, she attempted to bite him. She succeeded once and left a vicious mark. 

He slapped her so hard, half her face swelled up that day. 

When the doctor had asked what was the cause of it, Sutton, her escort to the doctor's office, lied. He told the haughty doctor that she had banged her face against the doors repeatedly. Julie knew the doctor wouldn't believe her, he never did. He didn't believe her about the demons in her hands or the fact that she was perfectly sane.

He never believed her before, why would he believe her about a lecherous guard?

Julie's opinion of the male half of the species was already pretty low, but between the two males she was forced to put up with now, she wished they'd all die. She hated men. They were sex driven, egocentric pigs that deserved to be roasted alive on a spit in every woman's front yard. 

And then Sutton began to get bolder.

They called her bitter.

Sutton seemed to always be there, or near her. She would glare at him and curse at him under her breath. As long as she was tied up in the jacket or down on the bed, she was at the maniac's disposal. Even if he was perverted and a evil acting man, he was clever. He'd never come to her at night when some might raise an eyebrow. Oh no, Sutton was too clever for that. He'd be the one to administer the drugs or to tie her down or suit her up.

She bucked against him constantly, biting and crying but never speaking. He would laugh and continue his molesting. Generally, his hands would drag across and linger on her chest as he did his duties. Once even, Julie had been tired, so tired, that he was able to suck on her neck and leave evidence of his being alone with her. 

A symbol, she'd learn. A symbol to the other guards that she was marked territory. If they touched her, they'd have to answer to Sutton. She wanted Sutton to die.

Not only die, to suffer. Only after he suffered could he be allowed to die.

Then the jacket came off. The doctor felt it was time to allow her with others again. Sutton didn't like this. Sutton tried to fight this, making up lies and stories about Julie to the doctor. Though she still hated both of them, the doctor would not yield.

The next time Sutton tried anything, he walked out of her room with several deep scratches across his face. Everyone turned their head the other way. It was part of the deal, Julie would come to realize. If they had to ignore the guard getting his pleasure, they had to ignore him getting his pain as well. 

When she was allowed in the room with the other patients, she was able to suppress their emotions, not wanting the demons to come out of her hands again. Sutton was right there the whole time. When the other, newer or nicer guards asked why he was sticking so close to her, he lied again. He said she was put under tight surveillance. 

Julie clawed the table so powerfully, she broke her fingernails and left deep ridges in the top.

They called this uncalled for.

Weeks dragged on like this until the doctor had seen the mark on her neck, almost black and the size of a fist. The bruises along her face gave indication that this was not something she could have done by herself or alone. When he questioned her about it, with Sutton out of the room, she looked away. The man was probably in on the entire thing and sorry he didn't get first dibs. 

But Julie felt his concern as easily as he felt Sutton's lust. One word was enough to have the doctor upset, she merely spoke Sutton's name. Within the hour, Sutton was reassigned to an older male gentleman who had bladder control problems. Julie smirked at this.

The ass was getting what he deserved, but it wasn't enough. Until he was humiliated against his will and couldn't do anything about it, then and only then would it be fair. When he was dead, it would be fair to Julie. 

Her new guard, Thomas, was nice and apologized for even holding her a little too roughly. From him she felt insecurity. He was no threat. He was not out to "mark" her or anyone else. He would bring her to the room with everyone else and stand towards the back and chat with the other men in white. 

Things were looking a bit brighter. Julie's nails started to grow back.

They called this better.

Sutton's visits were few and far between as the weeks droned on. Julie was able to focus her mind on other things. Until at least, the day that Sutton was left in charge of the entertainment room with only three occupants in the room at the time. Julie dumbly thought since there were witnesses she'd be safe. 

She was wrong.

He came up behind her, ignoring the drooling woman in front of the television and the quiet boy sitting on the window sill. He came up, smiled that tainted smile, grabbed a fist full of her hair and pressed her startled mouth against his. His tongue quickly forced its way into her mouth. She gagged, trying with all her strength to get him off her and then she bit down on his tongue. Hard.

Blood filled her mouth as he flung her away from him, trying to curse and keep the tears from forming too noticeably in his eyes. She was tossed carelessly to the floor with a sound thud. Her elbow and entire left side ached with a dull thud at being tossed away thoughtlessly.

He glared at the girl as she wiped and rewiped her mouth. The demon of lust has defiled her. He was able to mutter a clear curse and with his blood slowly dripping from the corners of her mouth, she smirked. He stumbled out of the room.

She spat the blood out of her mouth. Crying and pounding her fists on the ground. Her nails broke again as she clawed the floor in anger. She hated this place, hated that man and hated humanity in general. Her mother forsook her, her doctor ignored her and the guard molested her. She hated them, hated them all! Someday, she silently vowed, her mind as a deep black glow started to twirl around her hand, someday she'd make them pay for the way they treated her. 

They called this life.

Through the corner of her eye, she saw a square of white being shoved in her direction. Shaken by the previous event she grabbed at the thing and the hand that offered it. Glaring up at whomever it might be, Julie was surprised, though the onlooker could not tell by her lack of change in facial expression, to discover it was the silent boy from the window. Glancing down at the white object, she found it to be a napkin of some sort. 

Some part of her was touched that someone actually reached out, the other louder and overbearing part of her wondered what it was he wanted with her. Everyone wanted something from her at this place. Her doctor wanted her as blackmail to her mother while getting paid to treat her and Sutton wanted to do things to her that would leave her broken.

What did Window Boy want?

Her unvoiced question must have been apparent in her eyes as the boy tipped his head to the side and, in an empty voice stated: "He's an ass." He paused and added a cold, empty smirk to his features before finishing with, "I'm David."

Julie didn't reply. At this the boy gave a noise of amusement before walking to the window and sitting on the rim like a bird on a perch. Soon after Sutton's stumbling, moaning disappearance, Thomas came into the room. He looked stricken and sorrowful. 

Julie wiped the blood from her mouth and climbed back into her seat without a word. She didn't dare make eye contact with Thomas. He seemed too nice to be in a place like this, taking care of people like her and working with a guy like _Sutton_.

Angry and violated, the girl dug her fingers into her already damaged palms. After countless minutes slithered by, she could feel his eyes on her. Though it was something she was accustomed to, getting stared at, after her many many weeks in this place, it wasn't pleasant. Her eyes snapped over to the window to see the black haired boy, David, glancing at her with disinterest. Before she could demand what it as he found so interesting, he turned back to the window's view of the outside world.

She found herself staring at him. Not with interest, but with contempt. Why hadn't he helped her? He could have kicked or killed Sutton but he didn't lend any sort of help. He was only there to help with the clean up.

They called her suspicious.

Sutton was given leave due to his on-the-job injury though no one would admit they knew how he got it. He said he was attacked by a patient and he fell and bit his tongue and needed several stitches. Thomas felt more at ease though Julie was cautious around the man as well.

Thomas was hiding something. An emotion not shared with the rest of the guards or escorts. Something she should have and probably did know a long time ago. Before Sutton, before this place, before the demons back when she was considered normal. She missed those days sometimes but hated the people in the past just the same. She hated the way they weren't able to deal with her differences. She hated the way they never came to visit and her name dropped from the vocabulary, she wagered, all together.

They shoved all the "different" people into a padded box and hoped to forget about them for the rest of their lives. It was always a "pity" or a "shame" when visitors did come for others. They had lost hope on their loved ones. There wasn't a sliver of it in their hearts, Julie could feel it, or the lack of it. The patients had lost their hope as well. When one loses that, she thought, what do they have to live or fight for?

It was easy to start acting like a lot of the other prisoners. Act like she was truly mindless and incapable of anything but staring at a wall and muttering random vowels. Even better, she could make up wild tales about some alien and scare those that were here due to their paranoia.

But then David came back to mind. She tried to read his emotions once, but got nothing in return. He just was. There was no anger, sadness, depression or hope. There was merely a human-like lump of flesh which sat in the window day in and day out. 

She kept her eyes trained to her book. Even though she was sure that someone was bound to notice that she had been on the same page for nearly a week. Since she would get to the room before most of the others, including the Window Boy, she had been slowly scooting her armchair closer to the windows.

Thomas thought this was cute and even smiled at it.

David, if he noticed, never said anything. He was a mystery and never had any emotions radiating off of him. It was like a cool drink of water after being in the hot desert winds for almost six months.

Another week later and without her chair moving any closer and her book finished, Julie sat in her chair staring off at the wall. Thomas was gently snoring in another corner of the room, he felt safe enough to leave the only other two occupants to themselves. 

Julie never gave him as much trouble as she had given Sutton and the administration was happy. She was ecstatic that the pervert, for the time, was gone. It was this day when she heard that vacant voice speak to her again.

They called this a start.

"It's a shame, isn't it?" David questioned the glass. Julie could barely hear him as the boy slid his finger down the glass's surface, making it scream. "He is the one who should be locked up."

Her attention went to the Window Boy then. His lifeless eyes met her when she turned. A chill of fear wracked her senses though still no emotion emanated off his being. Julie was so taken aback by his talking that she let her mouth hang open uselessly as she stared at him. 

He was thin, pale and topped with messy, uneven black hair. The light green eyes stared at her with the same unconcerned dullness as they did the first day he spoke to her. Julie had not realized how desperate she was for a conversation with someone else beside her guard and the doctor that when he turned back, she panicked. 

"What would you know about that?" She asked in a hoarse tone. "You were just an onlooker."

Then he laughed, a shallow, heartless laugh that the movie actors could never get when they played the roll of the villain. This had no humor in it and resembled a screech of a dying cat in its joy. After a few seconds of his laughter, he quieted, met her eyes and tipped his head. 

"He was reassigned to me." Her eyebrow rose. "And he's not picky about the sex of his victims." With that, David turned back to the window, drew his knee closer to his chest and ignored her. 

Julie's breath escaped her as she turned away from him quickly. She never considered what would happen when the doctor gave Sutton a new patient to attend. She was glad to be rid of him from her own life that she didn't care. A large part of her still didn't, thinking about her own freedom and how in this place you had to take what you could get.

Then she turned back to David and from the direction he had his face turned, she could see the large almost black bruise marring his pale white skin at the base of his neck.

They called her guilty.

The next day, Julie moved the armchair she had claimed as her own back to the original spot, close to the other side of the room. She shifted so that the high back was facing David. How could she face that apathetic boy? Any thing he was suffering was because she had spoken up. In her mind, she said that it was better him than her over and over again. But the heart that burned with so much hatred felt a tinge of sympathy. 

When David came in that first day since the chair was moved, he stopped for a miniscule of a second before proceeding to the window. He would sit there, for hours, not doing anything but staring out the window. Whatever he was thinking, he never said. His emotions, which seemed nonexistent, never surfaced in his face. He was a quiet mystery. 

Julie looked down at her hands, blue veined and scared. She clenched them and relaxed them. It was the first day she thought about the demons in her in a long time. Perhaps, as the doctor kept insisting, it was all in her head. If that was true, then she could always use these demons to her advantage.

Maybe even to avenge herself against the pervert who, according to Thomas, was due back within a week's time. Julie had moved her chair to face the brightest corner in the room. Tucked away and out of sight, she began to learn more about the "demons" she had so long avoided. 

They called this practice

When Sutton's inane smile made its reappearance, a chill had settled on Julie's soul. Her eyes glared at him as she secluded herself into the small chair once again. The man didn't take long to act. Half an hour later, the large man leaned over the chair to stare at her lap. Having sensed his coming, she knew better than to keep her demons on and neatly tucked them back to where they came from. His obscenities had barely started when Thomas came over.

The younger man was pleasant and questioned her about certain things of her chosen look. She wasn't stupid, Thomas was rescuing her from Sutton. Sutton wasn't stupid either, he knew what Thomas was up to and in a mad fury, grabbed David and dragged him out the door.

Julie watched unmoved until David turned around for the briefest of moments to lock eyes with her. Her stomach froze as her heart clenched with pain. He was going to suffer because she was safe.

But, it was every person for themselves here. Surely David knew that.

They called this hollow justification.

It took weeks, but at long last, she understood. She wasn't insane like they insisted. She was different, yes, but the demons were often under her control. They liked to feed off emotions, they danced their demonic joy at her fingertips and Julie learned to dictate their movement. She was getting better.

David was getting worse.

Thomas was still trying to be kind and supportive of her, but Sutton hung around like a spider, just waiting to catch the pretty fly in his web. There was nothing but dark demons flying off of Sutton, similar to ones almost every one of the patients had, yet different. They were depressed, lost and a slew of other things while Sutton was merely dark and dripping with malice and lust.

David had nothing. His emotions were locked up far within him, too far for her to reach without letting the demons take over her vision. People kept fading in and out of their skin, only the demons crawling around them would be visible, and then the person would reappear. But David, David was a white void.

He was the eye in the middle of the storm.

Sutton called in sick one day, under Thomas' careful watch, Julie went to David as he sat on the window.

"Wot are you looking at?" She asked him. Her tones had grown harsh and snappy, but that is another lesson she learned here. If you gave anyone an inch, they'd divide and conquer you.

His eyes, dead of emotion and life, turned to her. His pale and bruised skin gave all the indication of the life he currently led, but for the first time, Julie did not feel the pang of guilt. No demon lights flickered off of him as usual.

He replied by turning back to glass. Opening her mouth to attempt another try at conversation, a scream took the place of her words. It wasn't coming from her, but it came from the hall.

The guards fled the room towards the distressed sound. The coherent patients quickly ran to the glass window making up the wall between the room and the hallway. Julie was among the small crowd, and felt a wave of horror slam into her so hard that it caused her leash on the demons to slacken.

Groaning, the girl tore herself away from the crowd, back to the safety of her chair cave.

It wasn't enough. The sheer power of the emotions has her breathing strained and the demons were mocking her by dancing along her hands and upper arms. Frantically, she looked around to make sure no one could see.

David, still unmoving and uninterested, didn't turn from his spot. Julie wanted to cry in frustration but her pure fear and shock had her hyperventilating. Grabbing her throat, she tried to open it up, instead her world went black as the chartreuse demons lit up the room.

They called her trouble.

There was no straight jacket, no more medication but there was something horrible which happened. Julie's sight had been lost. In the burst of emotion, the demons robbed her of her sight and left only blobs of color were the demons in their flames joined together to form a person.

Maybe, she thought, they were right and she was crazy. Maybe she would slowly have her sanity sucked out from her and leave her hollow and insane. Maybe the demons were going to devour her. Sometimes she wish they would. If they did, at least she would be saved from this hell of white.

She wasn't any more trouble than before. She was too afraid to move, too afraid of touching anyone and absorbing their demons. It was different when she could only see the outer glow, but now? Now she could only see the 'heat vision' for a person. The demons stood proudly out of their cages, laughing coldly at her.

Thomas, she could see the deep blue demons of hurt come to surface on him when she would pull away from his touch. He was only trying to help her up from the floor one day and she had scooted half way across the room.

What was worse, Sutton had seen this.

He laughed his bitter and hollow laugh.

Fear gripped her stomach and allowed the little yellow demon to chew on it constantly like the end of a cigar in a smoker's mouth. Her weight dropped significantly within a few weeks, to the point they had to hook her up to an IV to keep her hydrated.

They called this worrisome.

It took a few days of solid food to prove that she no longer needed to be watched and treated as if she were some type of vegetable. If she didn't improve, she knew by the sickening way Sutton kept smirking that she'd have him reassigned to her because Thomas wasn't doing such a great job.

A few days after that, she returned to the commons area to sit in her chair which was now pulled to the furthest side to stare out a window. David was close beside her, though neither of them noticed the other at first. Within a week's given time, David finally spoke up again.

"Because your hands burn, that's why you here." Julie turned to him, her indifference was tailored tightly on her face. He tried to say it more as a statement than a question. She didn't give him any response but something akin to humor surfaced in her swirled sea of depression.

When they both turned back to the window, Julie saw her reflection. There sat a girl with dark brown hair, thin framed glasses and a paler than death complexion. She would have grimaced at her own unhealthy reflection but didn't find the energy. She no longer cared about emotions or what hell they brought to her. It was the demon's seducing ways that called to her.

"Is that why you have scars?" Julie didn't give him the luxury of a look this time, but just stared forward. "You hurt yourself didn't you?"

"Along with a few others." She whispered, eyes keeping to the cool blue sky spanning out side of the window.

They called this a breakthrough.


End file.
